Confluent does not currently support Windows. Windows users can download and use
the zip and tar archives, but will have to run the jar files directly rather
than use the wrapper scripts in the bin/ directory.

The number at the end of the package name specifies the Scala version. Currently
supported versions are 2.11 (recommended) and 2.10. Individual components of
the Confluent Platform are also available as standalone packages. See the
Available Packages section for a listing of packages.

The number at the end of the package name specifies the Scala version. Currently
supported versions are 2.11 (recommended) and 2.10. Individual components of
the Confluent Platform are also available as standalone packages. See the
Available Packages section for a listing of packages.

The platform packages of CP (confluent-platform-<scala_version>), which are umbrella packages to install the complete Confluent Platform, i.e. all its individual packages. See next point.

The individual packages of the Confluent Platform such as confluent-kafka-<scala_version> and confluent-schema-registry.

Here, the platform packages (confluent-platform-<scala_version>) as well as the individual Kafka packages (confluent-kafka-<scala_version>) – and only these – are available in two variants, named by the respective Scala version of Apache Kafka that is included in the packages.

Note

Why Scala, and why different Scala versions? Apache Kafka is implemented in Scala and built for multiple versions of Scala. However, the Scala version only matters if you are actually using Scala for implementing your applications and you want a Kafka version built for the same Scala version you use. Otherwise any version should work, with 2.11 being recommended.

If you choose to install via an apt or yum repository, you can install
individual components instead of the complete Confluent Platform. Use these
packages when you only need one component on your server, e.g. on production
servers. The following are packages corresponding to each of the Confluent
Platform components:

Version names of Kafka in Apache vs. Kafka in Confluent Platform:
Confluent always contributes patches back to the Apache Kafka open source project.
However, the exact versions (and version names) being included in Confluent Platform
may differ from the Apache artifacts when Confluent Platform and Apache
Kafka releases do not align. In the case they do differ, we keep the groupId
and artifactId identical but append the suffix -cpX to the version identifier
of the CP version (with X being a digit) in order to distinguish these from
the Apache artifacts.

For example, to reference the Kafka version 0.9.0.1 that is included with
Confluent Platform 2.0.1, you would use the following snippet in your pom.xml: